Salient » Liam Kennedyhttp://salient.org.nz
Tue, 28 Nov 2017 21:43:59 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.18What’s so Special about Special Housing Areas?http://salient.org.nz/2017/09/whats-so-special-about-special-housing-areas/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/09/whats-so-special-about-special-housing-areas/#commentsSun, 24 Sep 2017 20:00:26 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48576Cities are ripe with the promise of equality and inclusion. As the postcolonial theorist Paul Gilroy puts it, they have the potential to become places “in which cultures, histories, and structures of feeling previously separated by enormous distances could be found in the same place, the same time: school, bus, café, cell, waiting room, or traffic jam.” This proximity may be messy and fraught but in it lies the potential for a mutual awareness and recognition that erodes prejudice. However, too often this promise of equality and inclusion is sold short, and a wealthy elite are able to shape the spaces we live in to the detriment of others. Sometimes a city’s promise of equality and inclusion evaporates the moment it is founded. Cities throughout the world, including many in New Zealand, were established through the violent eviction of indigenous peoples from their hubs and villages and the confiscation of their land. The promise then continues to be broken through practises of segregation, gentrification, and speculation which seek to make our cities the haven of a select few.

Today in New Zealand, the promise of our cities is turning sour. In Auckland alone over 23,000 people are homeless. The government is perhaps the only entity with the resources and capacity to turn this situation around. However, a number of policies devised by local and central government in recent years look set to accelerate the rise of urban inequality and exclusion. One such exclusionary urban policy which has already had significant effects is Special Housing Areas (SHAs).

SHAs are areas of rural and urban land rezoned by local government for the fast-tracked construction of housing. They are “special” because the normal rules of development don’t apply to them. Rather than applying for standard resource consent under the Resource Management Act, developers working in SHAs can go through a fast-track consenting process with limited notification of the public and reduced scope for appeals. Since they were introduced in 2013, at least 70 SHAs have been established in Auckland alone. Smaller, but still significant, numbers of SHAs have been established throughout the rest of the country. While the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act of 2013 was initially introduced as a short-term measure, it has recently been extended until 2021. The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment argues that SHAs will increase housing supply as they open up new land for housing development and let builders get to work as quickly as possible.

This promised housing supply conceals the dark underside of SHAs. To see this side, you only need to travel a few minutes from the Auckland Airport to Ihumātao, South Auckland. In 2012, Fletcher Building purchased the Oruarangi Block, which runs alongside the village of Ihumātao, for a rumoured $19 million. Fletcher bought the rural land from its Pākehā owners on the condition that local and central government would accept the block as a SHA and rezone it for residential development. Auckland City Council and central government complied, and in May 2014 the Oruarangi Block was made a SHA and Fletcher’s plans to build 480 houses on the it were underway. The process occurred so quickly and quietly that most in Ihumātao had no idea it was taking place. Even the councillors responsible for making the block a SHA have since admitted they had little idea about what they were signing off on in the rush of it all.

The rub is that the Oruarangi Block sits on land confiscated from tangata whenua Te Wai-o-Hua. From the 12th century, Te Wai-o-Hua lived on the Ihumātao peninsula, which the Oruarangi Block is a part of, and cultivated its rich volcanic soils. The peninsula was criss-crossed with wharenui and fertile gardens which fed thousands. However, in the run up to the Waikato Wars of the 1860s, Te Wai-o-Hua was forced out of Ihumātao by the Crown to punish them for their support of the Kīngitanga, a movement formed to stop the loss of land to colonists. Te Wai-o-Hua fled south, and when they returned after the wars they found that almost all of their land, including what is now the Oruarangi Block, had been sold to Pākehā settlers. Once Pākehā were established on the peninsula, the forceful eviction of Te Wai-o-Hua and the confiscation of their land was promptly erased from the history books. Even today, the government’s New Zealand History website ignores the event entirely, claiming that the gardens around the peninsula “fell into disuse after the early 19th century inter-tribal Musket Wars and were swallowed up by urban sprawl.”

For tangata whenua, this history cannot be erased so easily. When I went up to visit Ihumātao early this year, one of the kaumatua there told me how her mother would sit on their veranda every night overlooking what was once their whenua and cry for the pain it was in. The descendants of those evicted, many of whom live in the township of Ihumātao, cannot afford fresh fruit and vegetables for their kids to eat in what was once a land of plenty.

Only in 2001 was some redress achieved when the Manukau City Council bought land on the Ihumātao peninsula and made it into the Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve. The Reserve did not include the Oruarangi Block, but the Manukau City Council promised it would eventually be included. However, when the Manukau City Council was absorbed into the Auckland “Super City” Council in 2010, this promise got lost. Instead of making the Oruarangi Block part of the Historic Reserve, the Auckland City Council helped turn it into a Special Housing Area.

When locals eventually got a whiff of Fletcher’s plans to build on the Oruarangi block, they launched the Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL) campaign in 2015. A number of those leading the campaign are direct descendants of Te Wai-o-Hua, and they have been reminded once again of the menacing side of urban development. First the government confiscates their land, now they are helping multinationals build high-cost houses on it. Through a mixture of direct action and legal appeal, the SOUL campaign has prevented Fletcher Building from building a single home, and those involved won’t rest until SHA is disestablished and the block is made part of the reserve.

Yet the question remains: why are tangata whenua having to undertake such a campaign in the first place? Why should the kaitiaki of this land have to struggle so hard to make their voice heard? SOUL argue that it is the SHA legislation which places Māori in this position. SHA designation removes any obligation to consult with tangata whenua about proposed development, as such violating the tino rangatiratanga of Māori over their whenua, kāinga, and taonga as affirmed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. SOUL has filed a Waitangi Tribunal Claim to this effect, and the UN has recently recommended that the New Zealand government re-evaluate whether the SHA at Ihumātao breaches the Treaty.

The failure of SHAs to honour the Treaty is enough to compromise their legitimacy by itself, but the problems do not stop there. For one, SHAs will not, and cannot, produce genuinely affordable housing for the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who desperately need it. This is because the vast majority of houses in SHAs are being built by corporate developers who are allowed to sell them at market price. This is such an astonishing policy that it bears repeating. In the face of widespread homelessness and overcrowding among New Zealanders on low incomes, SHAs are simply being used to churn out more million dollar homes. Presumably drawing on an old ECON 101 textbook, Nick Smith argues that the construction of more high cost homes will increase supply and bring demand, and market prices, down. However, this equation ignores the fact that most low income New Zealanders can’t pay anything near market price for a home. Building more market price homes might make buying a new home slightly more affordable for landlords, property speculators, and young professionals, but the pressing demand of low income New Zealanders will never be met under this scheme.

The news is not any better for the environment either. A study of Auckland SHAs, conducted by Nick Preval and colleagues in 2016, found that the areas will do little to curb the city’s urban sprawl or reduce carbon emissions. This is because a number of the SHAs, including the Oruarangi Block, are being built far from the city centre, disconnected from public transport, and on top of what were green spaces. Residents in these new SHAs will have no option but to hop in their cars and undertake the same long commutes that are driving emissions upwards. If we want to address climate change then smart, coordinated urban planning is crucial. SHAs are anything but that.

What is particularly worrying is that SHAs seem to be setting the tone for urban development in New Zealand for decades to come. What were zones of exception could soon become the norm. The Auckland Unitary Plan, which became operational in 2016, follows a similar logic to the SHAs but on a much larger scale. Like the SHAs, the Plan looks to free up land for developers, often in low income areas, and lacks any requirements around housing affordability. The Plan also limits the voice of tangata whenua in urban development by removing the cultural impact assessments previously required for development around Māori sites of significance under the Resource Management Act. Some companies have walked away from projects involving SHAs in the belief that development under the Auckland Unitary Plan will be even more permissive and profitable.

So, what’s the alternative? How can New Zealand’s housing crisis be addressed without side lining Māori rights or excluding the urban poor? The most obvious solution is a mass construction of universally accessible state houses lead by central government and tangata whenua. Unlike corporate developers, the state can construct housing on a large scale without needing to make a profit, and they have a proven track record of doing so. Between 1938–1950, for example, over 35,000 state homes were built. Unfortunately, many previous state housing schemes have excluded Māori, or looked to assimilate them, and bulldozed over wāhi tapu in the process. Any new mass construction of housing, therefore, would have to give tangata whenua a leading role in the scheme and be based around principles of kaitiakitanga (guardianship of people and land). According to Vanessa Cole, an advocate for Auckland Action Against Poverty, the mass construction of universally accessible state housing would create “a strong alternative to the exploitative private [housing] market” and in doing so drive down private housing prices and undermine landlords’ ability to charge exorbitant rents. As it stands however, no party in New Zealand is willing to undertake such a large-scale development of state housing in partnership with tangata whenua.

If we want to address the growing division in our cities, and realise their potential as spaces of equality and inclusion, then we need to fight back against SHAs and their ilk. This means joining groups like SOUL in their struggle against specific instances of urban injustice. It also means building these specific struggles into broader coalitions which can force the state to put its resources and power to better use. Only through claiming ownership over the future of our cities can we hope to gain the ability to determine the kind of society we want to be. These spaces literally lay the foundations and set the boundaries for what kind of lives we can lead. As David Harvey puts it in his book Rebel Cities, “the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of life we desire, what aesthetic values we hold.”

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/09/whats-so-special-about-special-housing-areas/feed/0Shabazz Palaces – Lese Majesty [Review]http://salient.org.nz/2014/07/shabazz-palaces-lese-majesty-review/
http://salient.org.nz/2014/07/shabazz-palaces-lese-majesty-review/#commentsSun, 27 Jul 2014 20:24:01 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=35938“To be us it takes leaps of faith,” so says Ishmael Butler, on Shabazz Palaces’ new album Lese Majesty. I’d agree. It takes a leap of faith to release a hip-hop album this progressive when so many seem content to rest in the commercial shallows or regress into ‘90s nostalgia. It takes a leap of faith to rap about pharaohs, stars and love when your fellow MCs are ranting about ‘ralph-level’ fashion. Fortunately for us, these are the kind of leaps Ishmael Butler specialises in. Butler isn’t a newcomer: he was one third of the sublime Jazz-Rap group Digable Planets. The trio released two excellent albums, in 1993 and ‘94, before breaking up in ‘95 to the dismay of hip-hop lovers past and present.

But, being the leaper he is, Butler returned. In 2009, Ish teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire to form Shabazz Palaces. The pair released two captivating EPs in 2009 before their masterful debut Black Up dropped 2011, showcasing a new strand of astral, futuristic hip-hop, infused with African instrumentation and digital wizardry.

Now, in 2014, we have Lese Majesty. The album is 18 tracks in all but only seven are more than three minutes. The typical hip-hop format of 16 bars followed by a hook is replaced by a more free form, unpredictable combination of verse and vocals. Butler’s flow is as slick as ever as he alternates between boasts, love lines, proverbs and strange visions like this from ‘Forerunner Foray’: “Black Stallions pull my Chariot/ My heart’s Broken/ Time travel fast and far/ To the last oceans.” Maraire works wonders on the beats. Stand-up bass is looped under handclaps, synths and autotune on the track ‘Ishmael’, while ‘They Come in Gold’ features the mid-track change-up to end all mid-track change-ups.

Lese Majesty’s best tracks are its longest; the middle section of the album suffers from a pinch too many one-minute sketches, but even these brim with an adventurous spirit. Shabazz Palaces have delivered a sophomore album worth your attention. Here’s hoping they continue taking leaps of faith for years to come.

4/5

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2014/07/shabazz-palaces-lese-majesty-review/feed/0Black-and-White Filmshttp://salient.org.nz/2014/05/black-and-white-films/
http://salient.org.nz/2014/05/black-and-white-films/#commentsSun, 18 May 2014 08:23:50 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=34601If I stood in the Hub and asked passers-by what words they associated with black-and-white films, ‘boring’, ‘old’ and ‘pretentious’ would probably come up. I didn’t stand in the Hub and ask, due to a lack of journalistic courage and approachability, but let’s just say I did. Why, imaginarily surveyed Vic students, do you feel this way? Who turned you against black-and-white?

Was it the Film lecturer, Media Studies teacher, or well -meaning grandmother, who made you sit through some impossibly dull film from the 1930s and spent half the time pausing it to tell you about their favourite bits? If so, I sympathise, I do, but I want to implore you to move on from the cinematic trauma and give black-and-white films a second chance.

Film-making, in recent decades, seems to be following a path of ever-increasing technical wizardry. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (although it did fuck up The Hobbit), but it seems harder to find big films that care about cinematography or acting and don’t involve at least one robot death-battle. If you want to sit back, crack open a brew, and watch a film that doesn’t leave you in a state of sensory overload, then B&W has got you covered. When the majority of B&W films were being made, the digital fireworks we are used to today didn’t exist to save audiences from bad acting or a lacklustre tone. The whole thing was at risk of falling flat. So when you watch a bad black-and-white film at least you know it’s bad, as opposed to a bad blockbuster where you’re too distracted by a digitally enhanced Scarlett Johansson and 3D explosions to tell.

Or what if you hate old things on principle? No problem: the last few years have seen more B&W films released than any other comparable time frame in recent history, according to Variety. Modern filmmakers have seized upon the format as an alternative to the special-effects onslaught, using it to make modern films with small budgets, ingenuity, and a refreshing absence of superheroes.

If my lengthy waffle has not convinced you, then see for yourself. Below are a few black-and-white films, old and new, to stream, rent, buy or steal. Beyond that, the monochrome world is your oyster.

Bande á part (1964) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard
Described by its director as “Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka”, Bande á part has it all – well-dressed French people, an unbearably cool dance scene, and more snappy dialogue than a Quentin Tarantino movie. In fact, Tarantino named his production company after the film.

La Dolce Vita (1960) Dir. Federico FelliniFellini’s dazzling masterpiece about celebrity culture follows Marcello Rubini, a gossip journalist, as he trails around Rome after starlets. Yes, it is three hours long, but three hours with Fellini is time well spent.

Deadman (1995) Dir. Jim Jarmusch.Jarmusch called it a “Psychedelic Western”, Neil Young did the score and Johnny Depp is in the lead role. What more could you ask for?

Frances Ha (2013) Dir. Noah Baumbach.Frances Ha is like the TV show Girls except it’s filmed in black-and-white, the main character is endearing and a few people manage to get their shit together. Set in NYC, and a hilariously unromantic Paris, Frances Ha shows off B&W in all its glory.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2014/05/black-and-white-films/feed/0Interview with Tom from @Peacehttp://salient.org.nz/2014/04/interview-with-tom-from-peace/
http://salient.org.nz/2014/04/interview-with-tom-from-peace/#commentsSun, 06 Apr 2014 07:06:15 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=33273Q: What’s behind the album title ‘ @peace and the plutonian noise symphony’?
A: We wanted to kill everything we’ve done previously. We wanted to remove ourselves from what we’d made with @peace.

Q: The album talks about space, Plato and extraterrestrials; not exactly hip-hop’s go to subjects. What brought these topics to the front of your minds?
A: I guess I just got bored. Now that we’ve talked about those I’m bored again. I need something horrible to happen.

Q: Carrying on from that, Does hip-hop’s preoccupation with booze, blunts and bitches frustrate you?
A: I think it’s not the music’s fault. The media’s preoccupation with hip hop music that involves that particular subject matter frustrates me. It’s not cool to be too complex at this time in music. People want simplicity. And I appreciate that. But the review I just read frustrates me. People trynna say we’re trying to hard.

Q: How did you find the launch party at Bodega?
A: Was better than Auckland. Getting a little more familiar with the material. But still a whole lot to work on.

Q: Who were you listening to while you made the album?
A: Allan Watts.

Q: The album often returns to our cosmic insignificance. Does that thought frighten you or inspire you?
A: Both.

Q: Topics like death and determinism usually confined to philosophy lectures or our own heads. Do you guys sit down and talk about this stuff over a brew or does it only come out in the studio? Do you think it’s a problem that no one talks about it?
A: I try to bring it up. But it’s a hard thing to make a good joke about. I think the irony is that the conclusion you usually come to after a long in depth analysis of those particular things (death, determinism etc) is that basically you should enjoy yourself. Problem is that there is some enjoyment to be had talking about so….

Q: You’ve mentioned elsewhere that some of the album was recorded in an isolated batch in Taranaki. What influence did that have on the album?
A: just makes everything easier to do. no outside influence. no pressure. just makes everything easier. i think i’d def wanna live in the country one day if i can.

Q: Got a collab with Lorde lined up?
A: was close. but she unfollowed me on twitter after i fake retweeted her.

Q: You guys talk about aliens a lot on the album. What’s your favourite sci-fi film?
A: hmmm…. I think Moon. Havn’t seen many though. Recommendations?

Q: Have you ever seen an alien?
A: No.

Q: Where to from here for @peace and Young Gifted and Broke?
A: Iuno to be honest. Can’t even get the inspiration together to write at the moment. So iuno… Suicide?